Politics & Gender is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2025. To mark the occasion, the journal published a special issue in March, featuring essays on the impact of Politics & Gender on political science and the growth of the gender and politics research community. Contributors showed how scholarship published in the journal has shaped knowledge on core topics in political science (Barnett et al. Reference Barnett, FitzGerald, Krumbholz and Lamba2025), such as gender and voting (Cassese and Friesen Reference Cassese and Friesen2025), electoral gender quotas (Krook Reference Krook2025), and intersectionality (Christoffersen and Siow Reference Christoffersen and Siow2025). Authors also shared how the journal has shaped their career trajectories (Jalalzai Reference Jalalzai2025) and the institutionalization of feminist perspectives in political science (Sawer Reference Sawer2025).
Celebrating this milestone anniversary has not simply provided an opportunity to look back on what the journal has accomplished over the last 20 years (Baldez and Beckwith Reference Baldez and Beckwith2025; Caputi et al. Reference Caputi, Kwak, Gonzales and Kaufman-Osborn2025; Tripp Reference Tripp2025). It also offers us a chance to think about how we would like to develop and grow the journal — and our research community — in the coming decades (Hahn Reference Hahn2025). For the current editorial team, one priority has been to increase submissions in political theory and international relations (IR), two subfields that have traditionally been underrepresented in the journal — despite the large number of scholars working in these areas (Angevine Reference Angevine2025b; Krook Reference Krook2023).
With these goals in mind, the current issue brings together and seeks to highlight recent submissions to the journal in the subfield of IR. The timing of this issue is not accidental. The year 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, the first time that the Security Council adopted a gender perspective in its work. UNSCR 1325 paved the way for a series of other UN resolutions and institutional reforms on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) that have informed global politics and inspired a large and continually growing research agenda in feminist IR.
The year 2025 has also been a difficult year for feminism in politics and public policy. At the domestic level, anti-gender actors in government and civil society have succeeded in many countries in dismantling and delegitimizing feminist institutions and programs. These trends have also affected foreign policy. At the end of 2022, Sweden — the first country in the world to adopt an explicitly feminist foreign policy — rescinded this commitment. Although scholars have been critical of the shortcomings of feminist foreign policy in practice, the overturning of these policies is unsettling. The emergence of anti-feminist foreign policies is also a real possibility.
The articles in this issue grapple with these questions from various angles. The first five articles were submitted independently to Politics & Gender in recent months. They include three articles on questions related to WPS, including women’s participation in peace processes (Aanstoos Reference Aanstoos2025), women ex-combatants in post-conflict political parties (Palik Reference Palik2025), and the invisibility of masculinities in humanitarian programs (Gilmore Reference Gilmore2025). The article by Flowers (Reference Flowers2025) contributes to the growing literature on gender and diplomacy, while Angevine (Reference Angevine2025a) develops the concept of an anti-feminist foreign policy, focusing on the role of abortion politics in shaping American foreign aid policies.
The next set of contributions on feminist foreign policy was curated by Columba Achilleos-Sarll, Toni Haastrup, and Jennifer Thomson (Reference Achilleos-Sarll, Haastrup and Thomson2025). This special section comprises three research articles analyzing feminist foreign policy in diverse national contexts (Färber and Standke-Erdmann Reference Färber and Standke-Erdmann2025; Mühlenhoff, Popovic, and Welfens Reference Mühlenhoff, Popovic and Welfens2025; Thomson and Wehner Reference Thomson and Wehner2025). It also includes five Notes from the Field, offering various insights on feminist foreign policy from the perspective of feminist practice, particularly in the Global South (Balbon and Christiansen Reference Balbon and Christiansen2025; Haastrup Reference Haastrup2025a; Leclerc Reference Leclerc2025; Philipson Garcia and Velasco Ugalde Reference Philipson Garcia and Ugalde2025; Sepúlveda Reference Sepúlveda2025).
This collection of articles is followed by a Critical Perspectives section on UNSCR 1325, edited by Summer Lindsey (Reference Lindsey2025). The contributors reflect on successes and failures in implementing UNSCR 1325 (Asante and Shepherd Reference Asante and Shepherd2025; Basu Reference Basu2025). They consider how feminist activists are, or should be, responding to challenges to the WPS agenda (Haastrup Reference Haastrup2025b; Hagen Reference Hagen2025; Schulz and Lewis Reference Schulz and Lewis2025). They also map new visions and strategies for overcoming the current wave of backlash against WPS programs and feminist foreign policy (De Jonge Oudraat and Brown Reference De Jonge Oudraat and Brown2025; Hudson Reference Hudson2025).
As a group, the articles in this issue not only draw attention to important questions and contributions in the field of gender and IR. They also show how feminist IR scholars are tackling questions that are highly relevant to the broader gender and politics research community. We would very much like to continue to publish more of this kind of work, and we sincerely hope that this issue provides inspiration for IR scholars to consider submitting their work to Politics & Gender in the future.
